Miss Bolivia 2011

Beauty pageants are huge in Latin America and Bolivia is no exception. Last night here in Santa Cruz, they held the 2011 version of the Miss Bolivia competition. I’ve been seeing the 20 some “misses” being driven around the city on my runs. A Hummer limousine that is promoting the contest has been transporting them to the various photo opportunities and promotional events. The local newspaper, El Deber, has a full rundown of the event here, although it is Spanish.

The event is absolutely hilarious and Nadia and I had a good laugh watching it on television. I can’t believe these girls take the event so seriously and put themselves through the ordeal. In the paper yesterday, they had the “lo bueno” and “lo malo” of each candidate like they were a soccer team. The writer or writers were quite blunt with the pros and cons of each candidate. For example, some of the comments were as follows:

For the winner, Ms.Mouton:

Lo Bueno – Beautiful. Without a doubt the best face in the competition. Her figure is in harmony (well-proportioned) and her hair is perfect. She is nice and active.

Lo Malo – She is about 4 centimeters too short.

Ms. La Paz: Lo Malo – “She is missing fitness and has a few too many kilogramcitos”

The winner was one of the favorites and all of the girls were quite attractive. If those things were written about my daughter, I would have a problem with it. I didn’t like the amount of make up the girls wore or the evening gowns and continuous smiles during the 2 hour+ competition. I also felt bad for them with the amount of steps they had to negotiate on the stage on high heels. The organizers should have taken this into account and done a better job with stage design. The format of the show was also very unimaginative and I would definitely improve entertainment value of the show by adding some different activities and adding some more video clips to the evening program.

It was an exceptional night of television viewing with not only the contest, but CNN in Espanol carried Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s announcement of his cancer treatment from Havana. Having lived in Venezuela for five years, I have some opinions on this topic but will save this for another post. It is so nice to be able to understand the language. I wish my Serbian was better so I could follow events in the country closer.